Living the Live in the tradition of Advaita Vedanta

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Month: February 2013

Is it so natural to wake up in the morning, finding your clothes on the chair where you left them? You find yourself in the same bed, the same spot in the same room. The same body, the same you. Nothing has changed. The night has gone and the day-light is inviting you to become active. That is what we know, repeating the same experience over and over. Creating an existence of reality. But is it so natural? I got a question from someone.

Q: Every morning I find myself being the same me, the same body on the same spot as where I went asleep for the night. Lately I think: how self-evident is this actually?

A: You wake up, aware of the same body, the same you, because You want it to be like that. What do you remember of your first weeks, months, being ‘ in’ this ‘ same ‘ body?

Happy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Q: Nothing. Looking at some childhood-pictures bring back some memories of the moments the pictures were taken. Then I’m about 2 years of age.

A: What do you think made your body to wake up in the morning. In the same bed, the same spot as where you left it?

Q: My guess is, that it had its sleep. The body has its own rhythm.

A: Good. Your body has its own rhythm. And although you can’t remember anything about the first few months of your life, your body was already there according your relatives that can testify that.

So you already were around it seems. Point is: You can’t remember! So who is the one that remembers and knows it is around now?

Q: That is a part of me, my consciousness, or consciousness itself that let me realise I am here, alive. I am aware of me!

A: You are consciousness itself. True. It has always been and will always be. So even in the first months of your bodily existence it was already there. So what made you ‘ forget’ this first stages of your Life?

Q: My brain wasn’t so well-developed, maybe?

A: NO! You were not yet identified. Better, you were not aware being around! There was no Idea of being a you. There was no Idea of a you in a body amongst all other bodies in a daily repeating world!

Q: Why wasn’t I aware of this?

A: Simply because you were not afraid to die. There was no one to die! Slowly but certain you, the watcher, awareness, got involved in the Idea of a separate you. You start to be aware of others! Of a world around. You create your bodily identification. Realise that before all this, you had no body! Now you realise your body, and by then in separation, it got its own rhythm, and started to save itself from the first moment on. The heart, the lungs, everything was working to reach the next moment in time. It was programmed to survive. We just live with the Idea not to die. That is your Identification. You as a separated body trying to live forever.

Happy baby Emeth (Photo credit: Tim & Selena Middleton)

Q: So the Idea of time and body, related to each other, is just there because I let it happen? Again and again?

A: It is this Idea of a separated individual that needs to survive death, that lets you live the bodily experience in the first place. Give up this separation, realise you are always around, body or nobody. I guarantee that you will start to realise your true nature stronger and stronger. And this without the fear of death.

The Pope is resigning. The world is in shock. It is more than 500 years ago a pope resigned from his function. Not suddenly stopped by death itself , but because he wants to resign. And now what? Do we get a pope from Latin-America, Asia, Africa even? And how will the Catholic Church respond?

I have to admit that I have a protestant background. In my youth we learned better to avoid Roman Catholic children. A majority of the children in my street were catholics. First recently I realised I was never invited inside their houses for a birthday party. I didn’t belong to them.

Nowadays this segregation has long gone. My wife is from a catholic family. So are my best friends even. Our religious background is not important anymore. Sure, some people find it hard to live together with newcomers in our country, wich often are muslims . That too shall pass. In time people will just mingle, giving the cake as a whole a new taste.

As a child I pictured Jesus as a man with long hair, walking on sandals, living amongst the poor, sharing the little he had. And all he did was teaching people on the subject ‘ who are you’. He was meeting up with people who were living the life of an outcast, prostitutes, thieves and beggars. I was fascinated by the bible. Still I consider it to be a book of great wisdom and knowledge. Too bad there’s hardly anyone left to explain it in the real sense. It is even worse that there is hardly anyone left to live it to the fullest: it is your birth-right to seek Truth itself.

I was not raised with devotion for a pope. So it is hard to understand what he represents to devote catholics. For me, I never saw a pope that matches my view of a teacher of The Heart; I never heard a pope talking about true Love and Wisdom.

The same for the Protestant churches. They were part of my childhood, but I gave up on them when my minister called Buddhists in Thailand pagans. We had to rescue them for the church, our church.

It is your birthright

The church as institution. It makes me feel sad. In all traditions and religions where people become more important than their message, the master long gone, institutions kill the message. At its best they will be able to share a message of Love like the Dalai lama does for instance, but everyone who has traveled through Thailand knows that Buddhism as a guidance for live hasn’t resulted into a society full of equal Love and understanding.

The essence of Truth happens always in direct confrontation with the master. It is a living Truth. Jesus, Buddha and their disciples in Satsang together. They were alive as it can be. Not part of any dead institution.

The best thing to happen in life is the direct confrontation with One Who Knows. Than you will Know yourself. It is your birth-right